Yeah, the GOG installer is the real issue for Windows 7 users. All these fixes provided do work, BUT the game MUST be installed into the root directory of your hdd and NOT the programs folder. The game architecture is designed to run from C:/NeverwinterNights/NWN. If its not located there you WILL have serious issues and very few of the fixes will work.

I have multiple copies of the game from multiple sources - my original CD Roms, GOG, and Impulse. When I installed from the original CDs I had NO problems running the game. However, when I installed the GOG or Impulse versions I could not get the game to run until after I had moved it to the root directory of my hdd.

That is not true. The game will run fine as long as it's installed outside OS-protected directory or with UAC completely disabled. It doesn't have to be root C:\.

But if you want the crtical rebuild patches to work or most of the utilities included with the game, not to mention all of the wonderful third party utilities that have been made it needs to be in root C:/.

Each of these either read install path from registry or you can point them to you install directory manually.
Believe me, I've installed and heavily modded NWN countless times and never on system partition (C:). :)

Why waste the time changing things to point somewhere manually when its easier to just move the entire game install to where the original developer decided it belongs? Furthermore, many of the utilities to which I refer do not give you the option to point to the installation without altering the exe file or modifying their config files (e.g. Rsync driven patchs such as used by Project Q, the Critical Rebuilds, NW Shader, etc.); if the game is not in c:/ they fail.

I've been modifying NWN since 2004 and have been involved with numerous CC Projects. In my experience, default GOG and Impulse installations = PROBLEMS.

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/187/index/3341490

1. Install game using a custom install. When you are given the path to the install folder, change the path using the browse folder button so that it is NOT installed in 'programs (x86)', but directly on C drive. Do not make any shortcuts during the install process.
2 & 3 not relevant in this case...
4. Open NWN folder and find nwnmain.exe and nwn.exe.
5. Right click on these and select properties. Set them to run with full permissions, as administrator and under compatibility mode windows XP service pack 2 or 3.
6. (If you want a desktop shortcut) Right click on nwnmain.exe and create a shortcut. Drag and drop this to your desktop.
7. Update your drivers for video and sound. (go to the manufacturers of your cards' support pages. Laptop support pages can be very behind the times)

I am trying to install NWN on an older XP machine:

AMD Athlon
1 GB RAM
1.32 Mhz
64MB Nvidia graphics card

NWN.exe opens, but gives me an error if I hit play.
nwnmain.exe just gives me an error.

I know I have Direct x 9.0 or later - I just installed HOMM IV from the CD and that works just fine.

Any help would be great - Thank you!

EDIT: I updated the video driver and the game is working - just no sound during the videos.
EDIT: Running fine. Now I have a g.o.c. for the gogs.

I can't get the game to run at all on my system (Win 7 Home 64x) and I've tried all the tricks listed on this thread. Its weird because BG 1 & 2 run without any issues. Really annoying as its the first GOG game I've brought that has simply refused to function.

House mate had the same issue, when clicked play would come up wit an error message and crash, managed to narrow this down to his ATI grafics card as the new updates for it did not support open GI, which is needed to get Neverwinter running, repatched to an older version now works perfectly. hope this helps with any issues people may still be having

Someone mentioned remembering there was an 'easy solution' for the game crashing when trying to bypass the intro movies: press spacebar instead of clicking. Won't work for everyone, but certainly for some people. Make sure you're actually 'in' the game program - sometimes things pop up in the background when I boot up NWN and I have to alt-tab to select it back as the program I am 'on' (aka, if spacebar isn't doing anything, alt-tab until the NWN logo is selected, then try again). Like I said, won't work for everyone, but works for me on both computers I was having issues with.

Also, simply running the game as administrator solved the 'crash to desktop' problem I had trying to launch the game. Game is installed in the GOG default directory as per the installer, and I installed the critical rebuild patch with zero issues (I had the 'reflective silver skin' problem and this did fix it). So +1 here for being able to install the game safely in any director of your choosing :)

I've tried everything listed in this thread to get NWN to work on my Acer Aspire One 722 netbook, but it simply will not run. If I click play the splash screen appears, then disappears and nothing happens. If I run nwmaix.exe, it crashes after the screen goes black.

Running Win7 64bit with the latest AMD drivers.

There are also other threads about this

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/neverwinter_nights_diamond/q_nwn_crashes_on_startup
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/neverwinter_nights_diamond/windows_7_freezing

And more, after the first page. Might be worth checking if there's a solution in one of those.

Thanks! The solution here worked for me: http://www.gog.com/en/forum/neverwinter_nights_diamond/q_nwn_crashes_on_startup/post20